Chestnuts Around the World - A Novice's Summary
The U.S. chestnut industry is growing, but most Americans didn't grow up eating chestnuts like much of the world has. We've been doing some Googling (I know, pretty advanced research!) and below is some of what we've found about how chestnuts are consumed around the world.
Italy: castagnaccio and the caldarroste cart
In the Apennine Mountains, chestnuts weren't a seasonal treat so much as a staple. For generations of rural communities, chestnut flour filled in when wheat was scarce. That history lives on in castagnaccio, a dense, no-added-sugar cake made from chestnut flour, water, olive oil, pine nuts, and raisins, sometimes with rosemary or orange zest depending on the region. It's humble food that's since become a cherished autumn specialty rather than a necessity.
Alongside it, you'll find caldarroste, roasted chestnuts sold from street carts, especially in mountain towns where chestnut trees still line the hillsides. In Tuscany, chestnuts are traditionally associated with Saint Simon's Day. In Modena, they're soaked in wine before roasting.
France: marrons glacés at Christmas
The marron glacé, a whole chestnut candied in sugar syrup over a multi-day process, has a surprisingly specific origin story. Sugar arrived in chestnut-growing parts of Europe with returning Crusaders, and the technique for candying chestnuts likely developed in Mediterranean Europe in the 1500s. The first written recipe appeared in 1667, in a cookbook by French chef François Pierre La Varenne. It wasn't until the 19th century that marrons glacés became what they are today, when the industrialist Clément Faugier opened the first factory dedicated to them in 1882 in Privas, in the Ardèche region.
Today, marrons glacés are a fixture of French Christmas and New Year's tables, a small, deliberately indulgent thing most people buy in a box rather than make themselves. Roasted chestnuts (marrons chauds) are a different tradition entirely: a well-known autumn street food in French cities, sold hot from paper cones the same way they are in much of the rest of Europe.
China: chestnuts for Mid-Autumn and midwinter streets
China grows roughly three-quarters of the world's cultivated chestnuts, and chestnuts show up there in two different ways depending on the season. Around the Mid-Autumn Festival, chestnut paste is one of the traditional fillings for mooncakes, alongside lotus seed and red bean paste, for families gathering to mark the full harvest moon. Through the colder months, sugar-roasted chestnuts (tang chao li zi, literally “sugar stir-fried chestnut”) are a beloved autumn and winter street food, tossed in a wok with sand and sweet syrup until the shells crack open.
Japan: chestnuts for luck at New Year, and for the harvest in fall
Japan gives chestnuts two very different jobs depending on the time of year. In autumn, kuri gohan (chestnut rice, made by cooking whole chestnuts right on top of the rice as it steams) is a seasonal dish in a lot of households, timed to when fresh chestnuts (kuri) are at their best. Chestnuts have been an important food source in Japan since ancient times, and kuri gohan is one of those dishes people just associate with fall arriving.
At New Year, chestnuts take on a more symbolic role in kuri kinton, a sweet dish of mashed candied sweet potato studded with candied chestnuts, served as part of the osechi ryori New Year's spread. The name literally translates to “chestnut gold mash,” and the golden color is the point. It's served to invite prosperity and good fortune for the coming year.
Korea: chestnuts on the ancestral table, and gunbam in the cold
In Korea, peeled chestnuts (밤, bam) are critical for jesa or charye (which is a traditional rite). They're one of a small number of fruits required on the table, prepared and arranged in a specific order alongside jujubes, pears, and persimmons, for both Chuseok (the fall harvest festival) and Seollal (Lunar New Year). That makes chestnuts a recurring symbol of abundance and remembrance in Korean households, not just an ingredient.
Outside of the ritual table, roasted chestnuts (gunbam, 군밤) are a well-loved winter street snack, sold by vendors from late autumn into winter.
Portugal: Magusto and the first cold night
Portugal's chestnut celebration is Magusto (or Magosto in Spain), held around St. Martin's Day on November 11 and often treated as the unofficial start of winter. The tradition centers on bonfires, roasted chestnuts, and, in many regions, new wine that's just finished fermenting (jeropiga or água-pé), drunk alongside the chestnuts while everyone gathers outside around the fire.
Spain (Catalonia): la Castanyada
Catalonia's version of this same early-November moment is la Castanyada, celebrated around All Saints' and All Souls' Day. Its roots go back to medieval funeral customs, when bell ringers rang through the night in remembrance of the dead, and the food eaten was meant to represent a kind of communion with those who had passed. Today it's one of the four major school festivals in Catalonia, and the food has become the main event: roasted chestnuts (castanyes) sold hot by street vendors, roasted sweet potatoes (moniatos), and panellets, small marzipan sweets traditionally rolled in pine nuts, which have held Traditional Speciality Guaranteed status in the EU for generations. Chestnuts and moniatos are the savory side of the table. Panellets, paired with sweet wine, are the dessert.
Turkey: kestane on a cold Istanbul street
In Istanbul, roasted chestnuts (kestane) are one of the city's defining winter street foods, sold from carts whose smoke and smell perfume the central streets from late fall through winter. Locals mention them in the same breath as roasted corn (mısır) as an everyday Istanbul experience. Before potatoes arrived in the region, chestnuts were an important food source, especially for lower-income households, and that history is part of why they're still so woven into the city's food culture. Vendors roast them simply, with a bit of salt, and eating them while walking is less a snack than a small ritual of the season.